TRADITIONAL fairy tales are being ditched by parents who say they are too scary for young children.

One in five parents has scrapped classics such as Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs and Rapunzel in favour of more modern stories, according to a study published yesterday.

A third said their children were left in tears after hearing the gruesome details of Little Red Riding Hood. and nearly half rejected Rumplestiltskin as a bedtime story because of its themes of “kidnapping and execution”.

Similarly, Goldilocks and The Three Bears was thought to condone stealing.

The survey of 2,000 adults was of the US drama series Grimm, based on the traditional fairy tales, which starts at 9pm on Watch television channel tonight.

The poll found a quarter of parents would not read fairy tales to their child until the age of five, as they prompted too many awkward questions.

Fairy tales can be dark and dramatic so it’s understandable that parents worry about reading them to young children

Steve Hornsey, general manager of Watch

And 52 per cent said Cinderella did not convey a good message, portraying a young woman doing housework all day.

Steve Hornsey, general manager of Watch, said: “Fairy tales can be dark and dramatic so it’s understandable that parents worry about reading them to young children.”

But he added: “as we see in Grimm, good will triumph over evil and there is always a moral to the story.”

The survey found that two- thirds of parents avoided stories which might give children nightmares.

However, half agreed that tradi- tional tales were more likely to have a strong moral message than many modern books.